


Visitation

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:11:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who’s the one that took care of you, huh?  Who’s makin’ sure you grow up right, to be a man?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visitation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's smallfandomfest, for the prompt "Merle". Pre-series, bookended by Pre Episode 304.
> 
> * * *

There are only a couple of walkers in the reception area, both of them in the tattered uniforms of the guards. Daryl hangs back and lets Carl takes care of them; when the second has gone down, he scouts ahead into the cramped and dirty room off the main hall. 

He shuffles past the overturned chairs, the scarred and battered tables. Stops in the centre of the room to scrub a hand over his jaw. 

“This room clear?” Carl asks from behind him.

He feels his shoulders stiffen, takes a breath before he turns to clamp a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Clear,” he confirms. He juts his chin toward the reception area. “Good work back there.”

Carl shrugs under his light grip and ducks his head, and Daryl reminds himself to tell the kid he’s doing good more often. “Why don’t you go find your old man?” he says now. “Tell ‘im we’re locked down here.”

Carl nods. “You staying here?”

“Yeah,” he says. ”Just for a few minutes.” 

Daryl’s gaze flits over the room, settles on the locked door set into the back wall. He doesn’t even hear Carl leave.

_  
Daryl lies about his age to get into the visitors room. Hell, it’s even easy – he’s had fake ID since he turned fourteen, and he knows he’s big for his age, all lean muscle from long hours working at the meat plant after school and weekends. The old dude at the liquor store don’t even give him a second look anymore when he goes in to buy whatever rotgut’s on sale for the old man. The guard on duty at the prison reception isn’t any different, barely glances at his crappy ID before waving him through._

_But he looks around uneasily at the room full of dilapidated round tables, his gaze skittering over the wives and girlfriends and small groups of family members clutched around each table. When the guard on the wall gives him a steely glare he quickly takes a seat, drums his fingers on his thighs nervously until the back door finally opens and Merle comes striding into the room._

_He figured on Merle being different now, but he looks the same – still bigger than life, with the same cocky grin. His brother glares at some thin Hispanic kid at the next table before kicking out a chair, sprawling into it like it was the lazyboy in front of the broken-down TV at home._

_“’Bout time you came to see me, little brother.”_

_“I had to get approved,” Daryl says, even though Merle knows it. Merle doesn’t know that he hesitated over putting in the request for weeks, after that last phone call. It was a rotten thing to do, especially since the old man won’t come. He’s the only thing Merle’s got._

_“What’s the matter, boy?”_

_Daryl looks up from where his fingers have been tracing patterns on the worn tabletop. “Just not what I expected, is all.”_

_“What, you figured I was gonna be behind glass and we’d have to talk to each other through them little phones?” Merle scoffs, leans back in his chair like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “Hell, that’s just for hardened criminals, little brother. You think I’m a hardened criminal?”_

_Daryl’s not sure what Merle is, besides his brother. His only brother. The one person he could always count on. The person that taught him everything he knows about hunting and tracking and taking care of himself._

_He also knows that pot makes Merle stupid and meth makes him mean. And that one of the men Merle attacked ain’t never gonna walk again. That there was talk of removing Daryl from the house, until his old man put up a stink and started talking about suing the state. So he just shrugs, looks down at his hands again and says, “I brought you a carton of Parliaments, like you asked. I had to give ‘em to the guard.”_

_Merle nods. “I’ll get ‘em on my way back.”_

_“You take up smoking now, Merle?”_

_“Gotta do somethin’ to pass the time in this shithole.” He glances around the room lazily before leaning forward, muscled forearms resting on the little round table between them. “You do that other thing I told ya to do?”_

_Daryl tries not to, but he squirms under his brother’s gaze. “Nah, I—“_

_Merle’s eyebrows shoot up. “No? You remember where I told you the money jar is, boy?”_

_“Sure, Merle, but—“_

_“On the top shelf behind Ma’s old cookbooks,” Merle says, as if he didn’t answer. “Now you get your ass up there and you take some of it, you got me? They only pay us fifty cents a goddamn day in the prison laundry and that money don’t do shit in here.”_

_Daryl glances at his nails, worn to the quick. He can’t count the number of times he’s stood in that grimy kitchen, in the midst of the rank smell of cooking oil and onions that never goes away no matter how long he opens the window to let it air out. Can’t count how many times he’s looked over his shoulder to make sure the old man’s truck wasn’t pulling in the driveway before taking the stained jar down from its hiding place, opening the lid and gazing inside._

_He glances up, meets Merle’s eyes. “He ain’t got much, Merle.”_

_He’s not talking about the money, and Merle knows it. He slams an open palm down on the table, and Daryl twitches back involuntarily. “He ain’t never done shit for you, little brother! Who’s the one that took care of you, huh? Who’s makin’ sure you grow up right, to be a man? Isn’t that fuckin’ alky lyin’ there in his own piss, that’s for damn sure.”_

_“I’ll try to do it next time.”_

_“You’ll do it when you get home, and deposit the money in my goddamn prison account ‘fore you go to school in the morning.”_

_Daryl hunches his shoulders, wonders how much it would take to hop a Greyhound, just light out. Maybe go to California, get a job at one of those surf shacks on the beach, spend all day looking at girls in their skimpy little bikinis. Just go someplace, anyplace, where there wasn’t no Merle and no Pop and no headache pounding away at his skull day in and day out ‘til he can’t think no more._

_“You hear me, boy? Daryl? Daryl!”_

 

“DARYL!”

Daryl blinks in the dim light. He opens his clenched fists, flexes his fingers slowly. The slow trickle of sweat working its way down the side of his face has nothing to do with the close humid air in the old visitors room, and he takes a deep breath and swipes the back of his hand over his forehead. Only then does he look over his shoulder to see Carol standing in the open doorway, her hands on her hips and a look of exasperation on her face. 

“What?” he gripes out.

“We’re about ready to start moving the vehicles out of the way so we can clear the downed walkers out of the field.” She inclines her head toward the long hallway and the thin shaft of light at the end that indicates the outer doors. “Could use your help.”

“Yeah,” Daryl answers. He deliberately turns his back on the grouping of round tables, pushes the memories back down where they belong. “I’m comin’.”

She starts to turn away, glances back at him, thin worry lines creasing her brow. “You okay?”

Daryl squares his shoulders, hikes his crossbow more firmly over his back. “Said I’m comin’.”

Carol’s lips curve into a slow smile. “Now that’s something I’d like to see.”

Daryl snorts. “In your dreams, woman.”

Her high, bright laughter trails behind her as she walks away. And, Daryl thinks, nothing bad can happen in a place where that laughter falls.


End file.
